Hi,

There is nothing like LD to clear up misconceptions and bring you up to speed:)
Since the a few LDs ago, seeing some brilliant games made in Flixel I’ve always wondered what are the advantages of using a Library like that?
(Please be patient, I was quite a noob at game making for the web, let alone a 48h competition)
After all, it seems that all the tools that are available in AS3 API, are sufficient to create great games quickly.
After this LD I finally understand, even though I do not use that library because I enjoy learning to make stuff myself, I now know why it is so great and helps a ton.

Here are some reason you would want to use Flixel instead of writing more code yourself:

1. You can talk to people about something in Flixel, there is a community.
   Having conversations is beneficial to learning for beginners and advance users.
2. You get every tool neatly organized and handily available during the competition when you really need.
   Doing well in the competition may require preparations and knowing Flixel well covers that.
   If you write the code, you still may need to organize it properly.
   You may have a ton of code but is it handily available?
3. The tools are tested for bugs and they do what is expected.
   If you write it yourself, you still need to test for bugs and even if you do, one person testing in 48 hours or a few weeks does not match with ? thousands that are constantly testing it during the whole year.
   Having bug tested code saves you unwanted surprises.
4. You get really high performance, this is something I did not know. These tools are tweaked for high peformance.
   I made a huge maze for the competition and I know Flixel handles tile based maps, however I did not know it does it really fast and takes advantage of the best ways this can be accomplished in AS3.
   I actually learned and used Bliting in AS3 for the first time this LD which was really exciting to me.
   Flixel would have done that for me and I wouldn’t even need to know it is doing it. The same principle is true about other tools. Flixel offers an answer to the need for speed. This is very important for games where low frame rate ruins the experience.
5. Bottom line: If you understand how Flixel works, you can focus much more on the game instead of writing the “low lvl” functionality.
   Sure writing an engine is a wonderful learning experience but when you compete to make games, you can use this precious time to work on other aspects of the game itself.

So basically I’m not planning to use it but by I highly recommend it for most AS3 based game projects.:)
Now I finally know why. If you have any comments on the advantages of using Flixel please share.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2011 at 9:29 pm and is filed under LD #21. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.